June 24, 2013

I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I covered the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the past few months. I started small and worked my way up. This is the last one.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) — the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light. As taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS and Advanced Camera for Surveys, the HUDF shows a sampling of the oldest galaxies ever seen. Image courtesy of S. Beckwith & the HUDF Working Group (STScI), HST, ESA, NASA.

If we haven’t blown your mind yet, well then we’re just terribly impressed with your mind. We conclude our tour with the outer limit of the universe. The visible universe describes what we can see from as far back as the time of photon decoupling, while the observable universe includes what we can in principle observe of older signals from the Big Bang.

Taking the constant expansion of space into account, scientists estimate the distance to the edge of the visible universe at 45.7 billion light years, and to the more theoretical observable universe at 46.6 billion light-years. All in all, plenty more to explore we’d say.

As a child, I remember watching an American TV show called The Outer Limits. It was far out for its time, but not this far out.

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.

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I work out of our office on One Market Street in San Francisco. My standup-desk is right across from our Gallery at One Market. One of our newer exhibits is called Powers of Design. It was first featured at the Technology Entertainment & Design (TED) conference last year. Powers of Design depicts the size of everything from the inconceivably small to the mind-blowingly large. I covered the exhibit elements, one at a time, over the past few months. I started small and worked my way up. This is the last one.

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF) — the deepest image of the universe ever taken in visible light. As taken by the Hubble Space Telescope's NICMOS and Advanced Camera for Surveys, the HUDF shows a sampling of the oldest galaxies ever seen. Image courtesy of S. Beckwith & the HUDF Working Group (STScI), HST, ESA, NASA.

If we haven’t blown your mind yet, well then we’re just terribly impressed with your mind. We conclude our tour with the outer limit of the universe. The visible universe describes what we can see from as far back as the time of photon decoupling, while the observable universe includes what we can in principle observe of older signals from the Big Bang.

Taking the constant expansion of space into account, scientists estimate the distance to the edge of the visible universe at 45.7 billion light years, and to the more theoretical observable universe at 46.6 billion light-years. All in all, plenty more to explore we’d say.

As a child, I remember watching an American TV show called The Outer Limits. It was far out for its time, but not this far out.

Thanks to Global Content Manager, Matt Tierney, for the images and text that comprise the exhibit element. This is just one of the many exhibits in the gallery at One Market in San Francisco. The gallery is open to the public on Wednesdays from 12 pm to 5 pm, and admission is free. Visit us.